The Bacchae

A strong sense of danger and menace lurks in this courageous contemporary interpretation of The Bacchae.  It is a vital production, performed in raw and natural way, without artifice, by girls and young women from St Martins Youth Arts Centre. It is apparently the culmination of the results of these young performers being empowered and supported to self-devise around the ‘adult themes’ of The Bacchae. 

Euripides’s original is an Ancient Greek play that was first performed in 405BC.  Put very simply it looks at the conflicting sides of man’s nature – the controlled and organized, versus, the passionate and hedonistic as personified by the God Dionysius.

Andrea Jacobson as Director achieves in subverting ways of seeing, through carefully managing the work with Dramaturg Aaron Orzech. It is a fascinating attempt at communicating through a uniquely ‘feminine’, and therefore a somewhat enigmatic, sensibility.

There is an inference of youthful defiance in the performers’ commitment to the strong and weighty fabric of the ancient material, along with their retuning of ‘the gaze,’ through blatantly watching the audience watch them, often in a hostile way. Refreshingly it never smacks of the actor wanting to be approved of by their audience.

The evening starts with two figures on stage, possibly a male being pleasured by a young female – but no - it is Dionysius being born from the thigh of Zeus.

Sound (composition by Kelly Ryall and direction by Danielle O’Keefe), although often electronic, is live.  Violin and voices combine exquisitely. And the drum is used skillfully to underscore and vibrantly energize as well as to highlight and accentuate the perpetration of violence.

Tableaux and images allow for individual interpretation, many of them are very simple but loaded with social comment.  For example the only male performer, a very young person grabbing a can of coke and opening it after sinking into a couch may as well be cracking a can of Victoria Bitter. There are re-enactments of debasing sexual acts, imitation phalluses, an expression of the abject in the form of gold paint and Santa even makes a rather unpleasant appearance.

These young women morph form gawky kids to temptresses and everything in between and beyond. In doing so they remind us just how complex, clever and sensitive young people are.  And how they are emerging into a treacherous world where their individuality is threatened through being overtly sexualized.

The evening concludes with the lyrical touch of an inflated theatrical mask, of a happy comic mouth with a Greek flavor (pardon the pun) with a large lascivious tongue.

I felt an acute similarity with Gob Squad and CAMPO's Before Your Very Eyes that came to Melbourne for the Festival in 2012.  A kind of amazing trust and theatrical intimacy of watching young performers communicate, with adult audiences, from a natural and sincere place. 

Somehow through the sum of its various parts and after a pensive walk up and down Acland Street from Theatre Works my specific, very strong and clear, take home message was - as a community we need ritualized bacchanalian (Dionysian) festivals to release some of the darkness in our natures in a safe and overt way.

Suzanne Sandow

Photographer: Pia Johnson

Credits

Music Composition – Kelly Ryall.

Dramaturg – Aaron Orzech

Musical Director – Danielle O’Keefe

Lighting Designer – Danny Pettingill

Costume Designer – Chloe Greaves

Set Designer – Dayna Morrissey

Performed by St Martins Teen Ensemble: Bonnie Brown, Tove Due, Eve Fitzgerald, Anouk Gleeson Mead, Cindy Hu, Maima Masaquoi, Romaine McSweeney, Eve Nixon, Bridie Noonan, Lois Scott, Mieke Singh Dodd, Carla Tilley.

Music Performed by:

Freya Boltman – Vocalist

Julian De Marco – Boy Soprano

Nicholas Dugdale – Boy Soprano

Xiao Xiao Kingham – Pianist and Organist

Sarah Lee – Violinist

Bella Noonan – Vocalist

Zofia Witowski Blake –Vocalist and Percussionist

Lier Deng – Violin

Lara Stebbens – Cello

Kelly Ryal – Electronics and Sound